Ain't it True?
by isawrightless
Summary: He cups her face, she smells so sweet, he kisses her lips and doesn't let go for a while, he kisses her until her cheeks get a lttle red…


She's lying.

He can tell by the way her breathing becomes a bit uneven and her eyes no longer meet his. It's fine, she's saying, but he knows it isn't. He's feeling a little bit of everything, anger and jealousy, love and care. Is she lying only to him? Who knows the truth and why would she trust them with it instead of him?

"Mikasa,"

"It's fine," she says again. "I'm fine," and then she's out the door.

He wants to follow her and question her, but he holds himself. It doesn't help with his anguish, though. She's been lying to him for days and it's painful.

It's the same kind of pain he gets when he strains a muscle. It doesn't bother him until he moves but then it goes away and tricks him into thinking it's nothing until it comes back and leaves him wincing and trying to soothe the annoying ache away with everything he can think of.

He feels betrayed and mad and lonely.

—

"Hey, Mikasa."

She looks at him and he almost forgets about everything.

Almost.

"Why did you stay behind?"

"What?"

"Our last mission outside the walls. You stayed behind."

She keeps looking ahead.

It's pissing him off.

"I hurt my wrist and they thought it would be best for me to stay."

"And you agreed?"

"Yes."

"Just like that?"

"Yes."

He wants to scream at her.

"How did you hurt your wrist?"

"Writing."

"You hurt your wrist _writing_?"

She nods.

"Mikasa—"

"I stayed up all night writing reports, Eren."

He shakes his head, feels himself biting the inside of his cheek. That strained muscle, that pain, everything is going to his head, punching pretty holes on his skull, fucking hell, she's such a horrible liar and she knows and he just wants to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she spills everything out.

He wants to say something.

Anything.

But he walks away from her.

—

Armin is sincere when he says he doesn't know anything.

"Maybe you should try asking her what's wrong," is one of his solutions.

"She would just lie to me again."

"That doesn't sound like Mikasa at all."

"Yeah, I'm not so sure anymore."

"Maybe she just wants to be alone."

"She would tell me."

"Ugh…maybe," Armin blushes and Eren can already guess what he's about to say. "Well, maybe she's on that time and you know how she gets all these aches—"

"She gets back aches and headaches and cramps," Eren says. "She asks me every month to give her a massage and warm some rags to put on her lower back, and I do so. Every month."

"And?"

"And she didn't ask me for anything this month."

"Again, maybe she wants to be alone."

"Again, she'd just tell me so."

There's a moment of silence. Eren is cleaning dirt from under his fingernails and Armin is pretending to read his book. There are citizens passing them by, some kids whispering about their uniforms and how cool it must be to go outside and fight like heroes.

Armin smiles at that.

"She just let me go," Eren says.

"What?"

"Our last mission, she stayed here, and just let me go."

"What did you expect her to do, Eren?"

"What she always does! She always fights to be my side or at least near me…"

"And you always complain about that."

"Yeah, but—"

"You can't ask her to stop doing something and then be sad about it."

"I'm not sad!"

"Really?"

"She just let me go! She didn't kiss me, didn't… I didn't even get to see her before leaving."

"Did you do something to upset her?"

"No! I've been…" he shakes his head. "Argh,you know what, forget it."

"Eren—"

"Let's go back and train. If she wants to be that way then to hell with her."

He doesn't see the way Armin rolls his eyes at him.

—-

They meet during the night. He sneaks into her room and locks the door. When he sees her, the anger melts to nothing and he feels calm.

Because she's sitting on the bed and she's naked and beautiful and waiting for him, waiting to be his again. He can't help his smile. This is why she pisses him off so much, he thinks, because he's mad and in love at the same time and it's her fault and he doesn't really care.

He takes off his shirt, throws it to the side as he walks up to her. He's grown taller. It doesn't matter. He makes her stand and presses her against him and she smiles and his heart beats so much faster, she's smiling, screw everything else, screw the lies, she's smiling at him.

He cups her face, she smells so sweet, he kisses her lips and doesn't let go for a while, he kisses her until her cheeks get a lttle red, kisses her until she starts caressing him through his pants, just a bit, just to feel him, and he lets go of her mouth, hears her gasp as he kisses her neck. He slides his hands down to play with her breasts, tease her nipples, and when he does, she squirms and backs away and he feels a chill down his spine when he notices she's in actually in pain.

"I—I'm sorry," he stutters and when he's over the shock of hurting her, he gets closer again. "I didn't mean to—"

"I know," she says.

"I—you always liked that, you—"

"Eren, it's fine," she tells him, "I do like it, just not tonight, all right?"

He's grateful that she grabs his hands and places them on her shoulders. When she starts leaving small kisses all over his chest, up to his neck and then cute, noisy pecks on his lips, he gets comfortable enough to move his hands down to her waist and he still wants her.

So he fucks her like she wants to be fucked and when it's over, she rests her head on his chest and he knows she's listening to his heartbeat. That alone makes him question if she is truly hiding something from him and lying about it. Maybe he's just imagining things. Maybe he's been stressed out and upset and is seeing things that are not really there.

"You felt dfferent," he says, but he's smiling.

"Different?" she asks.

"Yeah, your body…"

"…What do you mean?"

"I don't know, you felt different. Your breasts were…heavier, your waist…I don't know, Mikasa. Just different."

She doesn't say anything.

He rolls his eyes.

"I'm not calling you fat."

She leans back to stare at him.

"What?"

She shakes her head.

"No, c'mon, it's something."

"It's—-It's nothing."

"Mikasa!"

"It's nothing, Eren."

She goes back to resting her head on his chest and he goes back to worrying and being mad. The smile on his face is gone, along with the calmness.

"Hey, how's your wrist?"

"Still sore."

He snorts. "Sure was fine tonight, right?" but the only answer he gets is Mikasa rolling to her side, her back turned to him.

He doesn't know if he's angrier at her or at himself.

—

They don't talk for three days.

Eren trains and shifts and roars and breaks as much as he can—-he can heal himself, anyway. His behavior is bad enough to make team mates stray away. He cools down when he spots Erwin and Hange looking at him. He's sure they're talking about him and he thinks it's best not to throw off years of learning how to control himself just because he's upset.

He shifts back to normal, he's all human and frail and tired and he just wants to bury himself into Mikasa's scent and she's nowhere to be found. She hasn't been training, and she hasn't been writing any reports. Up until recently she had been under Levi's wing, but now she stays inside and does, indeed, a lot of writing and helps with the cleaning.

All of this is strange enough for Jean to start bothering and accusing him.

Eren tells him to fuck off.

He sees her on the fourth day.

She shows up for dinner, passes by him and sits alone. Armin calls out for her, she shakes her head and for a moment, she exchanges a look with Eren. He wants to go sit with her and hold her and ask her what's wrong. Finding out what she's hiding and why she's lying doesn't even matter that much anymore, he just wants them to go back to being all right.

She looks away when Sasha sits next to her.

Armin tries to distract him by talking about how close they are to living in the outside world (they're not), and how much he hopes they'll find something in the next mission (they won't) and Eren wants to crawl out of his skin but he appreciates his friend's efforts, so he tries to pay as much attention as he can because Armin loves and cares for him and for Mikasa and for their well being. And so he sits and listens and nods until they hear Sasha screaming.

It takes him a second to understand what's happening, and once he does, he's on his feet and picking Mikasa off from the ground.

"I was talking to her and she was fine and then she passed out, I don't know what happened, she looked so pale…" Sasha tells him as he carries Mikasa to the door.

There's a crowd forming and so many people talking at the same time, but Armin is right next to him with his hand on Mikasa's forehead.

"She's burning up," he says.

They walk side by side all the way to the infirmary. Armin keeps trying to reassure Eren that she's probably just sick from the heat (the days have been extremely hot) and Eren keeps wondering if it's possible for one's heart to tremble because that's the only way he can describe what he's feeling right now. His heart is trembling and his mind is numb and he just wants to know what the hell is going on.

They get to the infirmary as fast as they can, and then they tell him to put Mikasa on a bed and make him wait outside as a doctor checks up on her. He refuses to leave her side but Armin convinces him to.

"Look at you, you'll just get in the way. Let him diagnose her in peace and properly."

He takes one last look at her before Armin grabs his hand and drags him outside. They sit on a wooden chair. No one knows what to say, so they don't talk.

Eren can't help but think about how familiar this all is: the smell of medicine, the lingering feeling of sickness and helplessness. He feels like a kid again, back when he used to go wherever his father went. He used to watch his old man diagnose and take care of every patient with patience and understanding. He's seen so much and—

His eyes widen.

He's seen this. He's seen this a million times.

And just like that, he pieces everything together, everything that's been happening. Everything starts making sense, and his heart feels like it's going to explode.

"Eren, what's wrong?" Armin asks.

"Mikasa…she's-"

"She's what?"

"She's—-"

"Young man?" the doctor suddenly calls him, standing by the door and holding it open. "We need to talk."

"I know," Eren says.

—-

He doesn't know how much time has passed, he doesn't care. He's sitting next to her bed, running his fingers through her hair. Her fever has gone down, but her cheeks are still a bit red.

When she opens her eyes, the first thing he does is greet her with a small smile. She squints and sits up on the bed, the white sheets sliding down to her waist. She's wearing a tank top and a long skirt and there's a scar on her left shoulder as a result of a fight against a titan from three months ago.

There's a glass of water on a wooden stand on the side of the bed and Eren grabs it and encourages her to drink it. She does so with shaky hands. When she's done, he takes the glass back and puts it on the stand and looks at her.

She looks down.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks.

She doesn't answer.

"I've been going insane trying to figure out what was happening. I thought I'd done something, I thought I'd screwed up, I…I thought you were falling out of love for me, Mikasa."

This is when she looks at him.

"You know I could never fall out of love for you."

"Then why did you do this?"

"I…"

"Did you forget my old man was a doctor? Did you think I wasn't going to notice?"

She stays silent.

"Mikasa, do you know how many pregnant women he had as patients?"

She starts crying. She starts crying and shaking and he lets her, he doesn't move, and he lets her.

"I'm sorry," she says, reaching for his hand. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I wanted to tell you, I—"

"Then why didn't you?" he says a little louder than he had planned to.

"I was scared!"

It hits him like a punch, her answer. He swallows back the lump on his throat and asks: "of me? Am I so horrible to you that—"

"No!" she almost jumps out of bed and holds his hand tighter. "I wasn't scared of you, I—I just—"

"Our baby. It's our baby and you hid it from me."

She's shaking her head, letting the tears flow. "It wasn't like that."

"But it still fucking hurt! What, did you think I wouldn't want it?"

"No!"

"Then why were you scared?"

"I…I wanted something good to happen first," she confesses.

"What do you mean?" he asks.

She lets go of his hand, his palm is sweaty, he's pretty sure hers is the same way, and when she places a hand on her belly he feels a chill run down his spine, messing up with his very core.

"Bad things happen to us, Eren. It's been years and we still haven't found an answer, and we've been through so much…we've been betrayed and you've been captured and we've been injured and we've lost so many people…" she swallows down a sob. "We lost four people the day I found out about the baby. Four people."

"Mikasa, that was a month ago. You've been hiding it from me since—"

"I know, it's just that I felt so scared. We were losing everything and everyone and I thought that if I told you, I'd be exposing our baby to all the cruelty in this world. I just wanted one good thing to happen, I wanted good news, I wanted some hope, just so I could tell you and not feel like I was harming our baby, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I wasn't thinking straight, I wasn't—"

He watches as she breaks down again. She hides her face in her hands, she's crying and shaking and he realizes that she's been feeling like this for an entire month. An entire month waiting for something good while feeling miserable and desperate and lonely wih their child growing inside of her.

He sits in front of her on the bed, grabs her hands and brings them down so he can look into her eyes. They're red from crying, and yet she's still the most beautiful woman in the world.

"You're so busy thinking about tragedy that you missed out on one thing," he tells her.

"What?" she asks, her voice so low and broken that it sounds more like a whisper than anything else.

"Something good already happened, Mikasa."

When she realizes what he means, she smiles through all the tears, she smiles and offers him a small, tiny laugh, as if she couldn't believe she managed to miss out on something as obvious as this.

He smiles, too, it's impossible not to. He then leans in enough to press his ear against her belly.

"Hi, baby," he says, and he knows Mikasa is trying not to cry even harder. "It's your dad, look, would you please tell your mom that you're the proof good things happen to us, too? What's that? Oh."

He looks up at her and says: "Baby thinks you're silly, and—" he presses his ear against her belly one more time, and then glances back up. "Baby totally likes me better."

She laughs. She laughs and that's the greatest sound in the world, he thinks.

"You're not mad?" she asks, feeling a bit better.

He leans back to stare into her eyes, he's still smiling.

"I'm mad that you lied and hid it from me. I'm mad that you just let me go crazy thinking something was wrong. But—-but now I know why and I'm happy."

"I'm happy, too."

"We're gonna be parents."

"We need to tell everyone."

"We will."

He brings her closer and kisses her and holds her and buries himself into her scent like he's been wanting to do. She rests her head on his shoulder as he wraps his arms around her.

"Aren't we going to talk about how awesome I was for noticing your body had changed?"

She smiles.

"It was really amazing, Eren. I'm proud of you."

"Why, thank you. Thank you very much."

They laugh and kiss and laugh and kiss and laugh and everything is going to be all right, he knows, he will protect and love them forever, he knows he knows he knows.

—-

a/n: _the m rated version of this fic and it can be found at my tumblr. you can find me there under the isawrightless username_.

been a while since i wrote a fic this long. feedback would be very much appreacited. i wanted to write a baby fic for them but i wanted it to be subtle and idk, i didn't want to make it obvious it was a baby fic. hope i managed to pull it through and i hope you guys liked it. there will be more fics about the pregnancy and then about the baby because i try to act tough but i'm all for fluffy, baby fics about my otps.


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